The DMZ

by Jeanete Windle

  And that quickly, it was over. There was a moment of silence, broken only by the idling rumble of the F-117. Then a yell of triumph arose from the edge of the jungle. As Rick rolled away from her, Julie raised her head cautiously. Everywhere, it seemed, bodies littered the ground, most fallen where the security forces had retreated to the edge of the runway. Several dark shapes were spread-eagled against the lighter concrete of the airstrip, casualties of a futile dash for cover. At least four bore the long arrows of the I’paa thrusting upward from their bodies.

  Julie scrambled shakily to her feet, ignoring the sting of scraped flesh on her knees and hands. This was no dream! Incredibly, miraculously, they were alive. And their enemies—

  “Rick! The plane!”

  It was moving again. The pilot had to have seen his companions going down, and it was enough to make him pause in his final taxiing maneuver. Clearly something had gone terribly wrong, but the pilot was carrying on his mission. He no doubt had been chosen for it because of his fanatic commitment to the cause; if what he saw outside his canopy denoted a serious setback, he still had a bellyful of death to deliver to the infidel.

  But in the pilot’s haste to finish his turn, the F-117 nudged into the embankment. There was a scream of accelerating RPMs in the twin turbofans. Julie looked about frantically. If only they still had the Semtex or … or something!

  Rick was one step ahead of her. Grabbing a pair of grenades from a guard’s belt, he snatched up the Uzi from where it had fallen beyond Taqi Nouri’s outstretched hand and sprinted toward the F-117.

  He shouldn’t have made it, but the force of the pilot’s hasty reversal had thrust the twin butterfly-wing tails of the stealth fighter right up over the embankment. An avalanche of dirt spilled onto the airstrip as the twin tails gouged deeply into the bank. The engine RPMs dropped abruptly as the pilot realized his error and stood on his brakes. As the pilot eased the plane’s rear out of the dirt, Rick caught at the edge of the wing and vaulted aboard. By the time the tail was clear of the bank, he was on the roof behind the canopy. In the dim glimmer of the glow sticks and one fluorescent lantern still alight beside the runway, he was hardly more than a moving shadow, but Julie heard a blast of gunfire above the accelerating whine of the engines and knew that he was attempting to blow off the hatch that covered the refueling drogue.

  By now the pilot realized he had company. A stamp on the brakes jerked the plane, throwing Rick forward and knocking him off his feet. Only a quick grab at a protuberance on the roof kept him from sliding over the edge. Julie watched with held breath and clenched fists as he pulled himself back to a crouch. Please! Oh, please!

  But the whine of the engine had now risen to its necessary acceleration for takeoff. Rick threw himself forward, grabbing for the edge of the refueling drogue as the F-117 began to move. Julie saw one hand release its hold to go to a pocket. The grenades.

  The stealth fighter picked up speed. It rolled by, the nearest wheel passing so close to the sprawled shapes on the runway that an arrow protruding from one back scraped at the underside of the wing. Julie’s stomach caught in her throat to see Rick’s form clinging to that black shell. How could any human possibly hold on?

  He couldn’t. Even as Julie broke into a run after the accelerating plane, the dark shape on the F-117 dropped away. Rolling off the roof, the body struck the wing, and with horror, Julie saw it literally bounce before falling clear to hit the ground.

  Finally unimpeded, the F-117 raced down the runway, still gathering speed, its black shape aimed unerringly between the two dotted lines of light. Julie hardly noticed or even cared anymore. Sobbing, she sprinted toward that ominously still form.

  One thousand one. One thousand two. One thousand three.

  The F-117 didn’t lift its nose until it reached the last set of glow sticks. Then the wheels left the ground. Julie reached Rick’s side at the same moment. He wasn’t moving, and blood seemed to be everywhere. With a cry of anguish, Julie fell to her knees beside him, but even as she felt for a pulse, her head went up instinctively to watch the stealth fighter climb steeply toward the canopy, the black shadow of a bat leaving its cave.

  Rick’s final heroic act had not succeeded. They had failed.

  But even as Julie bowed her head in grief, a thunderous explosion rocked the night. The burst of light that accompanied it was so bright, it penetrated even the camouflage nets, dazzling Julie’s eyes. As she sprang to her feet, she could see only a haze of fire beyond the jungle where the F-117 had disappeared. As the thunder died away, Julie saw a shower of flaming meteorites raining down into the swamp. The wreckage of the F-117.

  Behind her, Julie was only vaguely aware of the shouts of triumph and running feet, of Bernabé racing toward her with one of the fluorescent lanterns held high in one hand, his spear still waving in the other. Her eyes were held with incredulous wonder by that raining curtain of fire. Beyond all hope, beyond all despair, as night itself had turned to day, defeat had turned to victory.

  God, we did it! I don’t believe it! We really did it!

  No, not we—You!

  From behind her, as the last of the flaming debris extinguished itself in the swamp, she heard a groan. Julie whirled around in time to see Rick roll over. As he raised a bloodied hand to his head, she fell again to her knees beside him with a cry of joy.

  “Boy, that really hurt!” He groaned again. “What did I miss?”

  EPILOGUE

  JULIE WALKED OUT TO THE END of the runway. Without the camouflage nets that had previously concealed the entrance, the opening created where the airstrip dead-ended in the swamp gave the impression of an enormous portal onto the outside world, the two massive mahoganies on either side suggesting the doorjambs, while the camouflage mat stretched between the umbrellas of their branches overhead formed the lintel.

  Julie stepped out onto what would have been the threshold—the concrete edge where the runway dropped off into the water. Dawn was just laying the first streaks of color above the jungle canopy on the far side of the swamp, staining the algae-choked water with rose and gold so that its placid surface was for the moment a vision of splendor. It was going to be a cloudless day.

  Stopping at the water’s edge, Julie noted where the wheel tracks of the F-117 still showed just how closely calculated that takeoff had been. She breathed in the perfume of a night-blooming jasmine crawling up the tree trunk to her left, its petals just beginning to fold up for the day. Other exotic blooms less sweet-smelling but more colorful, were spreading their own petals to greet the morning.

  Above the swamp, a flock of fruit bats wheeled against the growing light, heading home to roost. Out in the water, a fish leaped, a streak of silver. With a screech, a heron dove down to snatch the fish up. The bird rose, the beating of its long, white wings a symphony of sound and grace, the fish flapping and struggling in its powerful beak.

  There was so much beauty here, Julie reflected, as the bird gobbled its breakfast—and so much pain as well. Just as both beauty and pain had intertwined in her own life, even when she had chosen to see only the pain. What she hadn’t recognized—had refused to recognize for so long—was that both could come into her life by the same hand of a loving God; both were part of anyone’s life in one way or another.

  Steps signaled someone’s approach. Julie turned to see Rick striding toward her. He was fully dressed, wearing a clean set of fatigues he had scrounged out of one of the cambuches. He moved a little stiffly, but looked alert and wide awake. She would never have guessed how many bandages he carried under his clothing if she hadn’t applied some of them herself. Miraculously, he had broken no bones in that final fall, though Julie suspected at least one cracked rib either from the fall or the earlier bullet crease. Despite the blood that had frightened her so, his injuries had proved to be only scrapes and bruises—though a good many of them.

  Julie pushed away the memory of that unmoving, blood-stained form. It held too many horrors.

  “How are yo
u feeling?” she asked him.

  “Hyped up on painkillers at the moment. Ask me when they wear off.” Rick grinned down at her. Despite a nasty scrape down one cheek and deep lines of tiredness at the corners of his mouth, he was looking more relaxed than Julie had ever seen him, the restlessness and iron control, the constant air of vigilance that had been there as long as she had known him, laid aside, at least for the moment. This mission had cost him so many months and nearly his life, and Julie could only imagine his sense of release at seeing it over—and successful.

  “And how about you?” he asked.

  Julie had almost forgotten about the machine gun butt across her face, though now that he had reminded her, she realized just how sore her cheek and jaw still were. “Oh, I’m fine.” A smile touched her eyes as she glanced pointedly at the jacket of his fatigues. “It would be a little hard to complain after seeing what you’ve got under there.” She stifled a yawn. “Though I could sleep for a week now that the adrenaline is wearing off!”

  “Well, it won’t be much longer. That’s what I came to tell you. I just got off the phone with Colonel Thornton. They’re on their way.”

  Once events had slowed down the night before, Rick had gotten though to San José on the base’s communication equipment. The colonel had in turn been delighted to hear that Rick and Julie were still alive, incredulous at their story, then coldly furious. With the base already secured, there had been little point in risking a night drop, so he ordered them to stay put until first light, when he would be there with a full team. Their first order of business would be the arrest of a certain counter-narcotics sentry assigned to the American operations team, Jaime Ramirez.

  “They’re bringing a team of our guys—Special Ops from San José. And a Colombian unit as well from Colonel Serano’s troops. Once they’ve secured the site, they’ll airlift us and the prisoners back to San José. Oh, and they’ve got a medic team with them too.”

  “Good!” Julie said with relief. “Because Raman doesn’t think one of the Iraqis is going to make it if we don’t get him to a real medical facility fairly soon. Yacu—the I’paa with the leg wound—is doing better. But Raman figures he’s going to need major surgery.”

  Raman, the Iranian biochemist, had been the only one of the base contingent to be spared by the I’paa attack—because he wasn’t armed or in uniform, Bernabé explained afterward. Rick had found the scientist cowering behind the crates in one of the cambuches and had pressed him into service as a medic. There had been little that could be done for one of the I’paa, who had caught a burst of gunfire full in the chest. But the other—Yacu—had a shattered femur. Of the six Iraqis caught in that deadly volley of arrows, only two had survived long enough to receive medical attention. One of them had suffered an abdominal wound that looked to have missed any vital organs, but the arrowhead had punctured the other through his right lung.

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for surgery for him.” Rick shook his head. “I just came from there. He didn’t make it through the night. Those who got the poison darts are the lucky ones. Raman’s antidote seems to do just about as well on them as it did on us. Though they may not find a charge of murder and attempted genocide much of an improvement.”

  “At least they’re alive,” Julie said dryly. “Bernabé asked me with all seriousness if we wanted them to dispose of the prisoners. He figures it’s a great waste of time and energy to be guarding them when we could have finished them off and all had a good night’s sleep. They’re lucky the I’paa aren’t still cutting off their enemies’ heads and shrinking them.”

  She glanced back along the runway to where a dozen I’paa had the survivors corralled on the concrete in front of the hangar. The Amazonic natives had flatly refused to place them under guard indoors. Not enough open space to watch for enemies, Bernabé had said. Only the wounded and Raman were under the thatched cover of one of the cambuches, where two of the I’paa warriors monitored their every move. Compared to the well-equipped soldiers who had patrolled that perimeter the night before, the semi-naked bodies and primitive spears and bows of the I’paa seemed almost ludicrous. But neither Julie nor Rick doubted their capacity to keep the prisoners under control.

  Nor, from the furious expressions Julie had seen as she walked down the airstrip, did the prisoners. Though Julie thought of herself as a mature, forgiving adult, she had to admit it afforded her no small pleasure to note a certain blond head and black turban among them. I hope you rot in jail for the rest of your lives!

  “I still can’t believe they came back,” she said aloud. “Do you know what Bernabé told me when I asked him why? He said that they’d always gone to the riowa when they had trouble—to my parents, to me. The other villages of their tribe had turned to the environmentalist groups and the aid organizations. They believed that we knew everything and could do anything. But now they saw that we were only men like themselves who could fear and bleed and die just as they did. And if we could give ourselves for those who were not our family without any promise that we wouldn’t suffer harm, then how could they continue to call themselves men if they weren’t willing to do the same? He said that it was time that they gave instead of only taking—to you and me, their friends, to the people who were dying, to the God who had created them.”

  Julie swallowed down the emotion that tightened her throat. “What he didn’t say—but I know—is that he spent all those hours convincing them to come back!”

  Julie had made another phone call once Colonel Thornton had finished his debriefing and allowed them off the air. It had taken some time to track Norm Hutchens to a U.S. embassy VIP guest apartment in Bogotá, into which only his vast influence could have gotten him. The emotion that had wavered through the old newspaperman’s voice as he came on the air had laid to rest any lingering doubts Julie might have had as to her place in his life, even followed as it was by a scathing indictment of his young reporter’s carelessness in getting herself kidnapped on the job.

  Julie smiled as she recalled some of those remarks. By tonight he would be demanding his story. Her world was returning to normal.

  Rick had insisted on one other thing once his own scrapes and ugly leg gash had finally been attended and security arranged for the prisoners—a nasal swab to test for anthrax exposure, not just for Julie but for the I’paa who had approached the village. For a biochemist like Raman, it had been a routine task, and he had been eagerly cooperative. Hoping we’ll put in a good word for him, Julie concluded.

  It had been a shock for Julie to find out that she had indeed tested positive for anthrax, along with four of the I’paa who had gone closest to the village, including Bernabé. Fortunately, the Iranian biochemist had also had the foresight—or misgivings—not to settle himself in a stockpile of the deadly disease without an ample supply of the appropriate antibiotics. Already that night, Julie and the I’paa had started on the long course of treatment, though it had taken some persuading and intervention from Bernabé as village healer to convince the Indian warriors that these white pills would kill the evil that was growing in their bodies.

  Julie shuddered to think what might have happened if they’d gone on downriver just a few more days. What a quirk of fate—or another evidence of God’s hand on this whole venture—that Julie’s decision, and the I’paa‘s, to make a stand against evil had saved her life and theirs.

  A silence fell between the two at the water’s edge. Out over the swamp the sky was brightening, its reflection below beginning to fade from rose and gold to just gold. Dawn would soon be lifting its face over the horizon.

  In the growing light, Julie could see that the drowned forest in front of her wasn’t as dead as she’d thought. Not far out into the swamp, a tall specimen of hardwood had broken off under its dying weight, its remaining stump thrusting only a short way out of the murky water. But rising from the center of the stump was a hint of green—tender new shoots springing up from the nourishment of that rotting corpse.

  Unles
s a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies …

  Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it …

  Beside her, Rick was watching another fish leap out of the water, the silver of the concentric rings that rippled out from it cutting a perfect jeweled pattern through the gold. A deep breath of appreciation escaped him before he said quietly. “It’s going to be one beautiful day.”

  He glanced over at Julie. “I still can’t quite believe I’m standing here. I can honestly say I never expected to see another sunrise!”

  “I know, I was just thinking of that,” Julie said. She shook her head wonderingly as she turned her gaze back to the serene panorama of water and jungle and sky. “You know, I fought so hard against ever coming back here, and when I came, it was with only one thing in mind. Getting that Pulitzer and putting my career on the fast track. Not in a million years would I have ever dreamed I’d end up helping to save the world instead. Or that I even had it in me!”

  “I knew you had it in you—and so did those I’paa,” Rick said quietly. “Your parents would be very proud of their daughter right now.”

  “I know they are,” Julie answered softly.

  Rick cleared his throat. “As for that Pulitzer Prize, I’m afraid I may have some unwelcome news. That was something else Colonel Thornton had to say on the phone right now. Already, the powers that be are dropping a news whiteout over this whole thing—national security threat, classified information, the whole bit. They say if the American people knew how close they came to total destruction last night, they’d never sleep easy again. And they don’t want to give other terrorists ideas. Oh, they’ll have to give some explanation as to what’s happened out here, but it’ll be given out as another not-to-be-taken-seriously terrorist attempt, and the real story will be labeled top-secret and stuffed in a drawer—or computer file—for the next hundred years.”